


starlit wave

by t_fic (topaz), topaz, topaz119 (topaz)



Series: Shining On The Quay [3]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angsty Schmoop, Established Relationship, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Not Star Trek: Into Darkness Compliant, Post-Star Trek Beyond, Starfleet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-09-10
Packaged: 2018-08-11 14:59:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7897141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/topaz/pseuds/t_fic, https://archiveofourown.org/users/topaz/pseuds/topaz, https://archiveofourown.org/users/topaz/pseuds/topaz119
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So far as Chris could tell, with the warp capabilities of this particular ship, it was going to take a week and a half to get out to Yorktown, and probably the better part of the remaining half-week to finalize the approach and docking. </p><p>That gave him two weeks to figure out what the hell he was doing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Since it was pretty obvious that _Star Trek Beyond_ was pretending that _Into Darkness_ didn't actually exist, I decided I could do the same, too. So, yeah, that stuff with Pike in the beginning of the second movie? Nope. Never happened. ::nods::

Occasionally, the thirty-plus years he had in the Fleet came in handy, Chris thought as he accepted the packet of mission reports from Yorktown. People kept an eye out for things they knew he was interested in, and if he and Jim were a fairly well-kept secret, his connection to the _Enterprise_ certainly wasn’t. 

It all worked out in the end.

The news holos had obviously been edited to present the best possible interpretation of the recent events, but there really wasn’t any way to put a positive spin on the _Enterprise_ being lost (or the view of the _Franklin_ in Yorktown’s canals.) The official reports laid it all out, sparing no details of the _Enterprise_ ’s agonizing destruction. Chris might not have been on active duty for years, but he still felt that peculiar blend of adrenaline and horror that accompanied a red alert command scenario. He remembered how long it took to come down from one, too, and how many times the choices you made played out in your subconscious.

The extra years also came in handy when he wanted to make things happen, too. Even if he didn’t know someone who knew the right person, decades on the bridge had honed his _yes, of course you should let me do this thing I’m doing_ expression, so that all the objections to him beaming aboard the next starship bound for Yorktown melted away in the time it took for him to pack a bag. He waited until the last scheduled passenger had been been sent up, and then handed his expedited files to the ensigns running the transporter room. He tried not to let the stars on his shoulders scare them half out of their wits, but some days that was a losing battle, and on this one, he had less patience than normal. That also came through in his expression, and after a hurried, whispered conference and a few questions about whether the admiral might want to wait for the rest of his staff, Chris was stepping up onto the transporter. 

He’d barely stepped off the pad at the other end when the ship’s XO came briskly into the room. “Sir,” she said, snapping off an impressive salute for all that Chris could see that hosting an unexpected member of the Admiralty was the last thing her day needed. “We only just got the orders that you’d be joining us--it might take a bit to get your quarters sorted out.”

“At ease, Commander,” Chris said, returning her salute. “I had no idea I’d be riding along with you either.” It wasn’t a lie at all--the day had been half-over before the news hit and Chris had made his decision. “Find me a bed and a corner to record my reports and I’ll be most grateful.” 

Again, the words weren’t strictly untrue--Chris _always_ had one report or another due--but given the events of the past few days, he knew the logical assumption would be that he’d been dispatched by Fleet Command as the first wave of officers to deal with the situation at Yorktown rather than whatever it was that Chris was actually doing. To seal the deal, Chris added, “Point me in the right direction, Commander, and get back to your real job on the bridge. These stars don’t actually need a babysitter, you know.”

“Yes, sir,” she answered, snapping off another crisp salute and leaving him in the hands of a very junior lieutenant. That worked to Chris’s advantage as well--Colt had contacts all across the Fleet and all Chris had to do was drop her name and the lieutenant relaxed enough to get Chris to a corridor of tiny guest quarters just as the bridge sent out the warning of the jump to warp speed. Chris just had time to get himself settled before the familiar lurch signified that they were on the way. So far as Chris could tell, with the warp capabilities of this particular ship, it was going to take a week and a half to get out to Yorktown, and probably the better part of the remaining half-week to finalize the approach and docking. 

That gave him two weeks to figure out what the hell he was doing.

x - x - x

That, of course, turned out to be an entirely too optimistic estimate. Chris actually did have to get through the work he’d brought with him even before he spent the requisite time with the captain and the command crew, all of whom were gracious enough to at least try to hide their keen interest in everything that had happened at Yorktown. Chris relied a little more than he wanted to on the polite fiction of not being able to discuss confidential details of an active investigation, but since that was the truth no matter how he had obtained those details, it wasn’t something he was going to worry about too much. The real issue was that he had been counting on at least a few hours of uninterrupted time during the journey, time that he needed to sort out exactly why he’d felt the need to talk his way onto a Fleet ship and warp his way out to where Jim was.

As far as Chris could tell, Jim was banged up some, but had no serious injuries. If he was reading between the lines correctly, McCoy was far more concerned about Spock. Given that Jim and the surviving _Enterprise_ crew had been given priority assignments for the next completed starship being built at the Yorktown shipyards, Starfleet clearly wasn’t gunning for Jim’s head in losing the _Enterprise_ , which eliminated that line of reasoning for Chris to be two standard hours away from dropping out of warp and onto Jim’s front doorstep. 

It was time, Chris thought as he paced the perimeter of the ship, returning salutes and projecting as much of a ‘don’t interrupt’ aura as he could, to admit that he was having more difficulty than he’d expected with the distance between Jim and himself. The years apart had dragged like no others in his career; even the time he’d spent on New Vulcan had only distracted him slightly. Of course, that didn’t answer why he hadn’t suggested meeting in Yorktown during the _Enterprise_ ’s original R&R, but he thought he could put that down to sheer stubbornness on his part. 

Chris was the Fleet veteran, the admiral, the one who had decades of experience in dealing with relationships being put on hold. He was supposed to be able to manage his life and execute on the plan that had been put in place. He paced the corridors of the starship, absently returning salutes as he let all the excuses play out in his head. They essentially boiled down to two: they had planned for five years apart and an unexpected week at a star base wasn’t really worth the time it would take to get there and back; and Jim hadn’t seemed all that enthusiastic about meeting up either. 

Chris had always been able to think more clearly in the black, as though it stripped away everything that wasn’t essential, and he was grateful that this time was no different. It took a while, but somewhere near the end of the first week, Chris got a little bit of distance from the excuses and rationalizations and could see where they all boiled down to an insecurity that he he’d been doing his best to pretend nonexistent. Apparently, not only had his subconscious been hell-bent on cataloging all the ways in which he and Jim could flame out, but it’d also been busily shoving aside every rational thought he’d had on the subject. He circled around the admission for longer than he cared to admit even to himself, but there was really no getting around the fact that he’d been doing his best impression of a lovesick teenager, rather than the grown adult he was supposed to be. Fortunately, he’d listened to the part of his brain that had decided enough was enough and gotten his ass off of Terra even without really knowing what was going on.

Identifying his own issues wasn’t everything, of course--Chris was certain he hadn’t imagined Jim’s near-indifference and he didn’t think it was in response to anything Jim had picked up from him--but it did give him something to start with, and he was not going to turn down anything that gave him a more solid base to work with. He probably could have used more time to pick at the issues, but he couldn’t deny that he was happy enough that dropping out of warp speed for the final approach to Yorktown gave him an excuse to stop with the mental processes and get on with the real world.

After all, he was, first and foremost, a command officer, and they were generally much better off thinking on their feet and dealing with the actual situation in front of them. It was more than time for Chris to remember that.

x - x - x

They docked during Yorktown’s night, but Commodore Paris had sent an aide to greet Chris and escort him to her public quarters. Chris really couldn’t decline, but he did, once the first flush of social niceties were taken care of, make sure she knew he wasn’t there in any sort of official capacity.

“That does explain why I have a comm saying the investigative team had just departed from Fleet headquarters,” Paris said with a small but very amused smile. Given the late hour, she was not in uniform, but there was no mistaking the decades of authority she’d wielded. “I had been prepared to be astounded with the bureaucracy had you been the forward guard, given that you were _en route_ before we were entirely certain that the dust had settled, so to speak.”

“There are days when I’m astounded anything actually happens even in two weeks,” Chris answered drily. Paris’ smile widened at that, but it was still easy to see the long hours she’d undoubtedly been putting in since the incident. It wasn’t the only reason Chris moved to cut the session short, but it was one of them. “But it’s the middle of your night and I don’t need to be taking up more of your private time, especially not to grouse about the desk jockeys back at Fleet.”

“I am not at all averse to a little more of that, but perhaps at a more amenable time,” Paris answered. Chris heard the request for some unfiltered news and discussion under the delicate phrasing and made a mental note to find some time on what had to be a packed schedule no matter what the outcome of his time with Jim. 

“Absolutely,” he murmured, and stood to go. A different aide met him outside the Commodore’s quarters with a PADD and comm unit calibrated to Yorktown’s frequencies, and the welcome news that his luggage had been delivered to his guest quarters. The fact that these had been assigned to the same section as the crew from the _Enterprise_ wasn’t entirely a surprise even if Chris couldn’t decide whether that was a guess based on his association with the ship, or if Paris really was that good in accumulating information and knew there was more going on than was publicly known.

He decided he really didn’t care and tapped the PADD to start the directional system. It sent him on a direct path through the center of the starbase and the public areas before looping him back to the residential sectors, all without showing him the _Franklin_ or any of the other damaged areas. Good for general morale, Chris assumed, but not very helpful in trying to get an eyes-on assessment of the final part of everything Jim and the crew had gone through.

Chris had planned to wait until Yorktown's morning before making contact with Jim, but as he made the final turn on the directional system, he found himself stopping to key in a personnel request. It would only return Jim’s quarters if he’d approved Chris to see it. Given that Chris wasn’t supposed to be there, he didn’t expect to see anything, but he had suddenly reached a point where any avoidable delay in seeing Jim felt insupportable. 

If (as Chris suspected) nothing came back, then fine, he would wait the last few hours in his assigned quarters, but at least he would have tried. The PADD he’d been given was new, running the most updated systems and completely interfaced to the station’s systems, so that Chris had barely finished the thought when the PADD locater flashed green with a FULL ACCESS message and a corresponding light flickered near a door halfway down the corridor. 

A weight that was far greater than Chris had allowed himself to acknowledge slid off his chest and he took what felt like his first good deep breath in months. The light flickered steadily, a welcoming on-off-on, and before Chris got more than a few steps down the corridor, the door slid open and Jim leaned out, wearing nothing but generic, Fleet-issued sleep pants and a fairly impressive (even for him) plethora of half-faded/regenned bruises. 

“This fucking thing bings in time with the light.” Jim slouched against the door, watching Chris’s progress with eyes only barely slitted open. Chris thought he was less leaning and more letting the wall keep him vertical. “Nearly put me into cardiac arrest when it went off.”

“I’m fairly certain you can de-activate all of the literal bells and whistles on these things,” Chris answered in same low, carefully casual tone. 

“Didn’t think I needed to,” Jim said. His words were slowing down, not quite slurring together but going that way. “Th’ only person with access didn’t think a week of R&R was worth a half-galaxy commute.”

“You managed to extend your stay,” Chris said, taking the last few steps. “Also, I found a faster ship out.” It was technically even the truth--no actual civilian ships could make the time that a Fleet courier ship could.

“Cool,” Jim mumbled. He tipped his head back and looked at Chris. “C’n we do the talking thing in th’morning?”

“Yes,” Chris said. He reached out, telegraphing his intent, and touched the pad of his thumb to the last greenish-yellow smear of the bruise under Jim’s eye. Jim held himself utterly still, but Chris was close enough to see the pulse quicken at his throat and felt his own heart answer in kind. They stayed there in the doorway for a long few seconds, until Chris remembered where they were and reluctantly dropped his hand.

“C’mon.” Jim exhaled on a long, slow sigh and stumbled backward into the room. Chris got a brief impression of a living area and small galley before they were in the sleeping room and the low lights were dimming further. “‘M sleepin’ like shit,” Jim said as he rolled onto the berth, his eyes already closed.

“Hardly a surprise.” Chris loosened the fastenings on his uniform one by one, draping each piece over the small work table under the porthole. 

“I know, right?” 

“I don’t think we’d know what to do if both of us were actually sleeping well,” Chris said, adding _But I would really fucking like to try_ to himself.

“Figured I’d warn you b’fore I kick or scream or whatever it is I’m doing when the monitoring system’s been pinging me.”

“Duly noted,” Chris said. He hesitated there on the side of the bed, not sure sharing a bed was the best way to start on solving whatever was going on between them, until Jim mumbled, “Fuck, Pike, seriously, c’n we just freak out in the morning?” 

Chris sighed and shifted over so he could fit himself along the narrow strip of mattress that Jim had left him and, surprisingly enough, fell asleep within minutes.

He swam up to consciousness only an hour or so later, though, woken by Jim’s restlessness. He waited a few seconds, until it was clear Jim wasn’t going to settle back into sleep on his own, and then laid one hand carefully low on Jim’s back. He was keenly aware that he really had no idea of which mission-specific details were tying Jim’s dreams up in knots, but forged ahead and said, “Kirk. It’s over and done with. You’re safe in Yorktown.” 

It was a generic reassurance, but Chris kept his voice calm and low, and repeated himself twice before Jim came bolt upright, breathing in quick, shallow gasps. His eyes tracked right to Chris, and for a second, Chris braced to block the wild punch he could see was about to explode out from Jim’s shoulder. It was always a risk to touch someone like Jim while they were asleep, especially after, as Starfleet liked to call them, Incidents. Recognition flashed across Jim’s face, though, and he shook his head and dropped back down on the berth.

“We’re good?” Jim gasped into the mattress. “You’re good?”

“Bravo zulu,” Chris answered, using the outdated Fleet slang because it was sometimes easier to get Jim to accept that he’d done a good job if he didn’t hear the actual words themselves.

“Dork,” Jim mumbled, shaking his head but already halfway back asleep. 

They replayed the scene twice more during the dark of the night, but then Jim settled and the star base’s day was well established when it was Chris’s turn to jolt awake. Jim was climbing over him, muttering, “Shit, sorry, sorry--I have a briefing with my section chiefs to walk through the new ship’s schematics.”

Chris let himself sag back down onto the berth, willing his heart rate to settle as he watched Jim pull on what had to be a borrowed uniform, judging by the (lack of) fit. “‘S fine,” Chris sighed. “We only had talking and freaking out on the agenda this morning.”

“Yeah, they’ll keep,” Jim cracked, disappearing into the ‘fresher. “I haven’t slept this late since… everything,” he yelled, clearly around a sonic toothbrush. Chris put a careful tick mark in his Good column, reminding whatever part of his brain that had been running itself ragged that sleep irregularities were a bitch to smooth over and yet here they were, already on the right track. He threw back the light covers--Jim still put out heat like a furnace--and started pulling his own uniform back on. At some point, he was going to need to find the set of rooms assigned to him; with any luck, the Commodore's aide would have been right and his bag would be there, too. Jim reappeared in less time than Chris would have thought possible, with his hair slicked back and his scruffy beard gone, looking fairly regulation. The fading black eye didn’t help, but then he’d never _truly_ fit the mold, so Chris didn’t see why he should have started in the twenty or so months since they’d last seen each other. “Crap,” Jim sighed, looking Chris over with a critical eye while stamping his feet into his boots and scrabbling for his PADD and com unit. “I woke you up during the night, didn’t I?”

“What’s a nightmare or four among friends?” Chris answered, but didn’t bother to hide how pleased he was that he’d gotten to Jim before his dreams truly woke him. For his part, Jim wasn’t hiding his displeasure with the same situation. “Jim,” Chris added, “If we’re keeping score--which we _aren’t_ \--you’re still so far ahead of me in this that we’re not even on the same playing field.”

The first trip to New Vulcan had been especially rich with nightmare material; Chris had barely slept more than an hour at a time at first, and Jim had been there every time he’d come clawing out of the dreams. He knew Jim remembered that, and he held Jim’s eye until he acknowledged it.

“It is what it is,” Chris said. There had been times in the past when he’d nearly choked on the words, but they came more easily now.

“Doesn’t mean I have to like it,” Jim muttered, looking himself over quickly in the mirror and tugging his tunic straight. He met Chris’s eyes in the reflection, hesitating for a long few seconds before muttering, “Fuck it,” and spinning around.

“I don’t know why you’re here,” he said, crowding Chris against the work table and kissing him with a fierce, desperate intensity that sent adrenaline flooding through Chris as he matched it without thought, until Jim tore his mouth away. “Don’t know why you changed your mind, but don’t go anywhere, okay?” He kissed Chris again, still with that near-frantic edge, but Chris was ready this time and got his hands on him, smoothing a long, slow path up his spine. Jim sighed into the kiss, settling against Chris and lightening the kiss, and the ones that followed it, but not making any move toward stopping until his comm unit shrieked at him and Chris eased back away from him. 

“I’m here,” Chris promised. Jim’s eyes were still the most complicated things Chris had ever tried to understand, but he hadn’t gotten to where he was in life by backing down from a challenge. “I’ll be here.”

“Okay,” Jim finally said. “I’ll be here, too, as soon as I deal with this.” He leaned in and pressed his mouth to Chris’s once more, a quiet, almost chaste kiss this time, then spun away and flipped open his comm. “Good _morning_ , sunshine,” Chris heard him say as he strode quickly out of the room. Chris sincerely hoped it wasn’t Uhura on the other end but he supposed they’d deal with that, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, hello, welcome to my Space!Husbands on R&R head-canon. It got off to a little bit of an angsty start, but that should be taken care of shortly and we can get on with the fluffy stuff.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and yes, let's bump this up to Explicit...

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Jim said as he walked back in the door six hours after he’d left, “but if you’re here to tell me this isn’t going to work, I’m probably not going to let you have the conn on the new ship.” He threw himself on the lounge across from where Chris had appropriated the area meant for dining and turned it into a work station. “And it’s a really cool ship, so you’d be sorry.”

“It does have all the latest toys,” Chris agreed.

“There’s a ‘but’ in there, isn’t there,” Jim said.

“Only the one that goes along with you thinking a ship’s worth more than you to me,” Chris said. He tapped out of all his comm platforms and closed down for the day. Jim kept his eyes fixed on the view over the neatly manicured gardens and walkways of the inner core of the base. It was an attractive view—clearly, they’d given Jim one of their best billets—but Chris knew it wasn’t anything that would hold his interest.

“Yeah, well,” Jim said, shrugging, “I don’t have a lot of pride when it comes to you.” He sat up and finally looked at Chris. “I figured I’d go with everything I could think of. It’s not like I care what might work.”

“Jim—” Chris started.

“I know it hasn’t been good lately,” Jim said. “Us, I mean.”

“No, it hasn’t,” Chris sighed. “But that’s not your fault.”

“It kinda is,” Jim said. “I’ve been—I dunno.” He shook his head. “Stuck in my head, I guess. Couldn’t figure anything out.”

“It happens,” Chris said, understanding dawning. “Pretty much to everyone.”

“Yeah, Paris said.” Jim half-smiled. “Of course, if I’d been thinking, I might have remembered I had somebody on the inside who knew what it was like on the bridge.”

“Well,” Chris admitted. “If _I_ ’d been thinking, I might have seen what was right in front of my face and given you a heads-up before you got in too deep.” He crossed the small room to sit next to where Jim had straightened out of his slouch on the lounge. “I was too busy acting like a first-year to notice anything, though.” He eyed Jim out of the corner of his eye. “Apparently, I’m not all that good at being the one groundside.” He thought about it for a second or two. “Though, if you went by my history, I’m not particularly good at being the one in the black, either.”

Jim tilted his head and looked at Chris, a slow, rueful smile spreading across his face as Chris met his gaze with as much honesty as he could summon.

“So, uh, we’re both…?”

“Control freaks who’d rather run circles endlessly than actually stop and think,” Chris offered.

“I was gonna go with ‘idiots’, but yeah, that works, too.” Jim was flat-out grinning by that point and Chris had yet to reach the stage where he could resist an honest, real Jim Kirk smile. Since honesty was the theme of the day, he allowed himself to think that he hoped he never got to that point. Even when the smile faded, Jim’s eyes still held the warmth of it. “Right,” Jim finally said. “Idiots. Which leaves us… ?”

“Somewhere where we need to pay better damn attention to things,” Chris said, annoyance sharpening his tone. The more he thought about it, the more ridiculous the whole situation was. “It’s such a shame neither of us has access to anything like an entire medical corps with years of coping strategies designed for personnel in exactly our situation. Or that neither of us has ever worked to integrate that nonexistent corps into our staffing rotations, to keep our commands functioning properly.”

"Yeah,” Jim said. “Idiots. We’ve established that.” He eyed Chris with surprising patience and compassion, and Chris knew a moment of pride in him, at the consideration and maturity he’d grown into during his command. He might never outgrow the shadow of George Kirk to the general public—or to himself--but in Chris’s eyes, he’d already fulfilled far more of his father’s lost potential than anyone could have dreamed. “I’m just-- What comes next?”

“Next?” Chris said, practically snarling as the frustration—with himself, especially—flooded back in. “Next, in my opinion, would be to find one or two of that very corps that we have at our disposal, and work with them, separately and together, to make sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen again.”

He _was_ snarling by the end, biting off each word as though he was reaming out a thoughtless ensign, which was, he acknowledged with a sigh, not exactly an attitude appropriate to discussing interpersonal relationships, no matter how angry he was to have screwed this up as much as he had.

Jim, though, didn’t seem to mind, not if the smirk on his face meant anything. “Damn, Pike, it’s like you know how that growl winds me up.” He leaned back and stretched out his legs, deliberately inviting Chris’s attention. “Did I ever tell you I used to go out hunting for somebody to scratch that itch, back before you ever looked twice at me?”

Chris stamped down on the possessive howl that wanted to come out and show Jim exactly what it thought about him and anyone else. From the way Jim’s eyes darkened and his throat tightened as he swallowed, Chris didn’t think he’d quite gotten it all off his face. That was fine; they’d definitely be re-visiting the topic—and the ridiculous idea that Chris had _ever_ been able to look away from him-- at a later date if he had anything to say about it. For now, he was happy enough to say, with credible evenness, “Be that as it may, it doesn’t answer where _you_ see us. If we’re not in sync on this, now would be the time to sort it out.”

It was more difficult to say the last part—and say it calmly and with no pressure or judgement—than Chris even had imagined, but he couldn’t think of a more important reason, so he channeled thirty years of command and did it.

“Yeah, no, I’m good,” Jim said, in a rush, the words spilling out of his mouth as though he was afraid Chris’s offer might expire. “I’m there for whatever it takes, trust me. I just wanted to make sure you, y’know, didn’t think this was more trouble than it was worth.”

Jim said ‘this,’ but Chris was fairly sure he could swap in an ‘I’ and not be in error. He kept that in mind as he said, “I am not denying that there’s going to be effort involved in this--” He gave in to temptation and reached out to trace his thumb over the high arch of Jim’s cheekbone, savoring the tiny tremor that followed in its wake. “But anything worth having is worth working for--” He dropped his thumb to stroke across a full lower lip, and if it was hard to tell who enjoyed it more, Chris didn’t suppose it mattered much. “And Jim, my recent behavior to the contrary, I can’t think of anything more worth having in my life.”

x – x – x

“Ok,” Jim said an indeterminate amount of time later. “Problem.” Despite his words, he was still pliant and languid in Chris’s arms, his mouth swollen from where Chris had licked and kissed and bitten it, his face flushed and his eyes dark.

“Really,” Chris murmured against the skin of his throat. Jim made a wordless sound and arched his head back a little more. Chris took it for the invitation it was and dragged his mouth along the exposed tendon, scraping a little with his teeth and eliciting a subvocal whine that was entirely detrimental to his self-control.

“Wait,” Jim gasped. “Really. Problem. Yesss.” He hissed out the last part as Chris bit a little harder. Just a little, because Chris was pacing himself. He’d promised himself that they were going to have a long night ahead of them. “ _Chris_.”

“All right,” Chris answered. He didn’t really take his mouth off of Jim’s skin, but, after one final bite under Jim’s jaw, he did stop working quite as diligently to make Jim squirm. “We have a problem, Mr. Kirk?”

“Fuck you, Pike,” Jim ground out, his attitude a little undermined by how he was still draped over Chris. Chris did not point this out, for which self-control his reward included Jim not moving. He teased his hand up under the tunic of Jim’s uniform, scratching lightly at the sweat-dampened skin at the small of Jim’s back and waiting with an as obnoxious of a calm as he could muster. “Yeah, we have a problem in that as soon as you step out of this suite, you’re going to be mobbed. Dinner is gonna be a bitch. ”

“We do have a functioning replicator,” Chris pointed out. He kept his hand moving and decided Jim must have a little feline mixed in somehow. It accounted for a lot, not the least of which was how he could arch up into a touch while scowling at the same time.

“Yeah, no, I don’t show my face at the crew mess and Bones’ll be in here to read me the riot act,” Jim sighed. “And probably jab me with something.” He dropped his head back down on Chris’s shoulder and mumbled, “I, uh, may have been, uh, phoning in the social niceties for the last couple of missions. Before all the shit with Krall knocked it out of me.”

Chris lost a little of his own easiness at the reminder of how he, personally, had allowed his own insecurities to miss all of this. Jim’s arms tightened around Chris.

“Better now,” he promised. “Bones just does the whole eagle eye thing, watching for relapses. It’s a reflex or something.”

“You go alone, I stay here with the replicator.” Even as he said it, Chris didn’t like the idea of being separated. Jim made a rude noise that Chris took as a rejection. “Well, then,” Chris said. “I suppose we might as well bite the bullet and make an appearance.”

Jim didn’t say anything for awhile, but then finally sighed. “Yeah, I guess.” He rolled off Chris and stood up, scrubbing a hand through his hair. He looked down at Chris and shrugged. “I know you’re right. It’s only been a couple of weeks since all the shit went down, and, y’know, we had the thing with the schematics this morning. People are going to want to know about all that and… Yeah. We need to go.” He gestured toward the sleeping area. “I’m just gonna ditch the uniform.”

Chris sighed and stood up himself, already missing the feel of Jim against him. He eyed himself critically in the mirror and decided he looked well enough. Jim came back in, again in clearly standard-issue clothes. Chris missed the worn-in jeans and the old leather jacket, though he supposed they were gone for good and didn’t bring up the topic.

“Sorry,” Jim said. “I’m--” He sighed. “This is stupid and childish--we lost so fucking much, and you’re still the first captain of the _Enterprise_ \--you _mean_ something to the crew, but... I just got you back. I’m not ready to share you. Not yet.”

Chris was moving before he even so much as thought about it, catching Jim’s face in both hands and kissing him hard.

“You’re not sharing me,” Chris told him. “You’re sharing the admiral, and even then, there’s a part of him that’s just yours because of the _Enterprise_.” Jim opened his mouth, but Chris kept talking. “Pike belongs to a lot of people, but Christopher is all yours.”

He kissed Jim again, took his time and kept going until Jim relaxed against him before he broke it off to say, “Lead the way, Captain.” Jim nodded once, squaring his shoulders and taking Chris to meet the crew.

x - x - x

Chris was, as Jim had predicted, all but overrun as soon as he stepped into the large meeting room that _Enterprise_ crew had taken over as their combination community and mess hall. He was very sure he didn’t deserve such a reaction, but he found himself just as eager to see so many familiar faces. He had reconciled himself to teaching and serving with the Admiralty--he was grateful to have that much, given his condition when Jim had gotten to him on the _Narada_ \--but he was always going to be a Fleet officer and the crew of the _Enterprise_... Well, they were always going to be his people.

Jim left him to the mob with a smirk and made his way through the rest of the crowd to where Commander Scott had the schematics for the new ship projected in a corner of the room. Chris caught sight of him from time to time, talking or listening intently, but always focused on the projection and the conversation. 

After an hour or so, McCoy cut through the crowd around Chris, growling and grumbling about heroic idiots who couldn’t take care of themselves any better than his baby girl. Chris wasn’t sure if he was more upset with Chris or with Spock, over whom he spent a fair amount of time in hover-mode, but since the good doctor’s prescription included a generously sized tumbler of actual Kentucky bourbon for Chris, he wasn’t going to complain. 

“Nobody’s gonna take offense if you’re sitting while they talk your ear off,” McCoy told Chris, all but pushing him after Spock, to a sitting area off to one side of the room. “And just in case you forget that, Chapel here will remind you of it.”

“Admiral,” the tall nurse greeted him. “You have no idea how happy I am to see you someplace other than a biobed.”

“Lieutenant,” Chris answered with a smile. “You have no idea how grateful I am to be that way.”

Chris didn’t have the sharpest memories of the trip back to Terra after the _Narada_ ’s destruction, but Chapel always seemed to be in them. His last clear memory of the entire incident was dropping Kirk, Sulu and Olsen onto the mining platform over Vulcan. He remembered expecting to die, he knew that, but there had been a last desperate hope that the Away team could maybe save Vulcan. After that, everything blurred into sensory impressions—he didn’t think he was ever going to forget the heavy metallic tang of the _Narada_ in nose and throat and lungs--and what came to him in nightmares. Jim had told him he’d been lucid and functional enough on the _Narada_ to have helped shoot their way clear. He was adamant that they’d both have been dead if Chris hadn’t been keeping watch. Chris believed him, but… He personally didn’t remember anything until the first time he opened his eyes post-surgery and Chapel had not only not objected to his needing to know everything about his condition, but had patiently read and translated the medical jargon in his chart fifty times in the first days.

Back in the present, Chris could see the faint marks under Chapel’s pale skin that told the story of time spent under the regenerators. She was moving with a certain care that Chris associated with muscle and bone damage, too, but she kept watch over Chris and Spock with an attitude that brooked no tolerance for BS, not from her charges or the rest of the crew. She ran McCoy off after ten minutes of hovering, made it clear that she knew he had her over in the corner as much for her own recovery as for Spock’s, and accepted Chris’s offer to share his bourbon without any fuss or medical whinging.

Chris found her even more delightful than he remembered.

A steady stream of beings made their way to where Chris and Spock and Chapel were tucked away, with new crew members being brought over by more familiar faces in order to be introduced. For having gone through the destruction of their ship and a nasty hostage situation, the crew was doing much better than they should have been. Chris made a mental note to mention that to the command team, as appropriate, but mostly, he was there to listen.

It was exhausting. Chris knew he’d been sliding into hermit mode with Colt permanently based on New Vulcan, but even if he’d been socializing according to her standards, he’d spoken to more people in the past few hours than he would have in a month.

“ _Someone_ is dancing around, trying to get your attention,” Chapel said to Chris, inclining her head to where Jim was, in fact, trying to catch Chris’s eye. Chris didn’t think Jim actually had a ‘too many people’ limit, but he was definitely checking on Chris’s. Chris nodded his agreement, and then turned back to take his leave. “When I’m no longer serving under his command,” Chapel said idly, “I would be fascinated to hear how you managed to get him settled in so quick and quiet.”

That was a little more familiarity than Chris usually encouraged in his junior officers, but she met his gaze with an arched eyebrow that said she knew exactly how far she could leverage his good will from the post- _Narada_ trip to step over that line. Chris shook his head and her mouth quirked into a positively evil grin. 

“It’s nothing nearly as exciting as you’re imagining,” he said dryly. She stood up with him and he brushed off her salute in favor of taking her hand in his. He leaned close to say, “Would you believe equal parts classical literature and cheap take-out?”

Her laugh was infectious enough that even Spock look tempted to join in. McCoy gave Chris a look that said he’d done at least one thing right in drawing a laugh out of her; Chris thought he might want to check in with her once or twice more. He might not be medically certified, but sometimes all a person needed was someone to be with. He wasn’t going to miss a chance to pay back even a fraction of what she’d done for him.

“I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know what that was about,” Jim said as Chris joined him.

“You’re probably right,” Chris told him. “I’m not entirely sure _I_ want to know and I was involved in it.”

“’s good to see her laughing, though,” Jim said. “Uh, don’t tell her I said that. She’d read me the riot act for ‘coddling’ her, and then Bones’d fuss at me for being a condescending dumbshit, and, yeah.” He sighed. “I’m really better at being a captain than that sounded.” Chris managed to choke back a laugh at the sight of Jim’s mournful face, but it was a near thing. Jim rolled his eyes, like he knew Chris’s inner struggle and said, “And speaking as the captain, Admiral, thanks for taking the time to see everyone. It was good for them.”

“It was good for me, as well,” Chris told him. “But you’re welcome, Captain.”

“I guess both of those things even out not being alone with you,” Jim murmured as they made their way back along the square to their quarters. “I’ll keep reminding the selfish brat about that, okay?”

“We could probably see about rewarding his patience,” Chris said. 

“You know, it really is like you can read my mind,” Jim answered with a start to a credible-enough smirk. Chris knew a suggestive quip wasn’t going to solve any real problems, but he knew every bit forward made a difference. “I think that bodes well for the rest of our night, don’t you?”

x – x – x

Patience-rewarding progressed in a highly satisfactory manner right up until Chris misjudged the angle necessary to get them into the sleeping area and backed Jim into the doorframe. Under normal circumstances, that would have been nothing but a momentary interruption--at most Jim would have smirked victoriously at distracting Chris so well and they would have carried on. This night, though, Jim’s back was one giant, half-healed bruise and they hit the edge hard enough that he hissed in pain.

Chris’s brain snapped into something that wasn’t quite hyper-vigilance, but was far too close for comfort, and he half-stumbled in his urgency to step back, give Jim room to move.

“No,” Jim breathed. “C’mon, c’mon, it’s nothing; I’m good.” He half-laughed. “Hell, you know a couple of bruises’ll get me going most times.”

“I know,” Chris sighed. He eased back another step and Jim followed. “I do.” He put his hands back on Jim’s hips, turning him enough to make sure they got through the door cleanly. “And you know I’m not generally opposed--” There had been more than a few occasions when Chris himself was the author of those bruises and he honestly didn’t know which of them liked that more. Suddenly, though, every time he closed his eyes, every blink , he was seeing too many people he knew and cared about hurting and in pain. Spock and Chapel, McCoy’s barely leashed frustration in the limits of his medical expertise, Jim himself--they were all taking their turn. “I just… am not looking for anyone getting hurt tonight. No matter how minor, or how wanted.” 

“Okay.” Jim looked at him with serious eyes, and Chris wondered just how ridiculous he was being. Before he could sort out what he wanted to say, Jim added, “We can do that.”

“I’m sorr--”

“Don’t go there,” Jim interrupted. “I honest-to-God don’t care what we do tonight. Or tomorrow.” He leaned into Chris, and then breathed out slow and deep when Chris let him in close. “I’ll probably have a couple of specific ideas for the day after, but that’s mostly because you’d be ready to comm Bones if I wasn’t giving you a hard time about something, yeah?” Chris half-laughed, and felt Jim’s mouth curve into a smile against his skin. “I can do this however you want, no problem.” 

Jim turned his head so he could drag his mouth along Chris’s throat, and where Chris knew he’d usually end with a bite or at least the scrape of his teeth, he only finished with a kiss over the pulse under Chris’s jaw.

“Let me?” he breathed, waiting easily until Chris nodded and then backing toward the bed, drawing Chris with him. Chris wasn’t sure why he was surprised at how easily he relaxed into Jim’s hands, but it was just one more thing in the Good column. Jim moved them carefully, his hands sure and steady as he dealt with shirts and boots and pants, not letting Chris do anything. Chris took the opportunity to indulge in things he’d missed over the last few years, looking and touching and just _being_.

“I liked doing that bit on Risa,” Jim murmured, his mouth and hands moving just as indulgently over Chris’s skin. 

“I liked it, too,” Chris answered, which was possibly the biggest understatement of his life. Not even the enormous number of credits it had cost took away any of the luster of watching Jim pleasure himself for an entire Risan night, the high-end communications package meaning that Chris could talk with him--direct him--in near-real time. Chris had the recording of it stored in his encrypted, private servers, but he’d never actually watched it, preferring to rely on his memories of just how desperate Jim had sounded toward the end when neither of them was quite sure what he was begging for. “Quite a bit.”

“Yeah,” Jim agreed. He rolled carefully on top of Chris, most of his weight supported on his own arms, covering Chris like a living, breathing blanket. “This is already better.”

Chris murmured wordlessly, his brain all but whiting out at the skin-to-skin contact, _everywhere_ , not just where Jim was rocking his hips so his cock brushed into Chris’s, but where his arms bracketed Chris’s shoulders and how his thighs slotted between Chris's. 

“Fuck, Chris,” Jim gasped. “Missed you, missed this.” Chris pulled him closer, kissing his mouth and jaw and temple, not caring where his mouth landed, only that he could, after so long, press one kiss after another after another against Jim and know that there was still the whole night to come. 

It blurred together after a bit, Jim’s hands cupping his jaw, stroking down along his ribs, holding his hips steady while he licked across the top of Chris’s cock. Chris slid his fingers through Jim’s hair, careful not to tug or pull, each stroke not to direct Jim one way or another but only to add one more point of contact between them. 

Jim moved with purpose, as though he had every action mapped out beforehand, everything from relaxing his throat and taking Chris’s cock deep to the delicate precision of knowing exactly where to work his tongue to make all the air rush out of Chris’s lungs at the blinding pleasure. It wasn't just the physical part of it, Chris acknowledged to himself, each part of the thought blurred and hazy. That was good, obviously, but knowing that it was just the start, that they had the night--and _more_ \--amplified every touch.

Jim took his time--and Chris let him--so that when Chris finally came in a long, coiling rush, Jim was shaking and flushed, already half-frantic to follow. Chris was just coherent enough to tug him up to share the pillow, so Chris could kiss the taste of himself out of Jim’s mouth and settle him with long, slow touches.

“What do you want?” Chris asked, lifting his mouth only the bare minimum necessary to speak. He slid one hand between them and wrapped it around Jim’s cock, stroking slow and light. “Do you want my mouth or --?” 

Jim shuddered against him but shook his head in quick, helpless jerks.

“This,” he ground out. “Want to--oh, _fuck_ ,” he gasped as Chris circled his thumb around the top of his cock, pressing only hard enough to catch the edge of his nail against the sensitive tip. “See you,” he finished in rush. “See you and feel you--”

“I’m here,” Chris told him, going back to the slow, careful strokes. “I can see you, too.” He half-expected a smart remark in answer, but Jim just curled onto his side, one leg thrown over Chris’s hip and let Chris kiss him and touch him and see him. Chris didn’t make him beg, but he didn’t rush either, and by the time Jim was coming, they were both wrung out and spent. They lay still for a while but Jim finally pushed himself up with a groan and staggered into the ‘fresher for damp cloths.

“Don’t tell Bones,” he said, dropping back down on the mattress next to Chris, “but there is no fucking way I’m going to run in the morning like my personal fitness report says I should.”

“I’ll leave that between you and McCoy,” Chris said, shifting over so Jim could curl into him. “But I probably should warn you that Chapel already is working on the adult-rated version of our courtship and if you don’t show the morning after she knows I’m here…”

Jim lifted his head up off of Chris’s shoulder and then let it drop back down with a thump when he realized Chris wasn’t joking. “Aw, hell,” he sighed, which was, in Chris’s opinion, a damned accurate assessment of the situation.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Chris said, “I’m fairly certain I’ll be invited on what’s most likely the first of many inspection tours of this facility.” Jim snorted. “It’s what admirals do, after all. Inspect.”

"Remind me to get Scotty to introduce you to Jaylah and let her show off the _Franklin_ ," Jim mumbled. "That'll be one you love, you big history freak." He sounded already halfway to sleep and Chris envied him that ability to drop off. Chris himself had had that before Nero, but now it took much longer for his thoughts to quiet. Jim settled a little more comfortably against him, though, and for the first time in years, Chris didn’t really mind taking that extra time to fall asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You don't know how happy I am to have gotten one of my out-takes from the original story in here: that Christine Chapel was Pike's first attack-nurse while they were still on the Enterprise. This also means she got to watch Kirk kind of hover around sick bay when he wasn't on the bridge. (She had full authority to kick him out when it was necessary, which she exercised judiciously, because her patients *always* come first.)
> 
> Unfortunately, that never fit in the original narrative, and I have no idea if Chapel was even in the AOS, but hey, what is canon if not to be handwaved, yeah?

**Author's Note:**

> This title is also from Houseman's poem, just like the first part. 
> 
> Oh, and I'm [](http://topaz119.tumblr.com)[topaz119](http://topaz119.tumblr.com) on tumblr if you want to come say hi!


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